Ken Tucker
Ken Tucker reviews rock, country, hip-hop and pop music for Fresh Air. He is a cultural critic who has been the editor-at-large at Entertainment Weekly, and a film critic for New York Magazine. His work has won two National Magazine Awards and two ASCAP-Deems Taylor Awards. He has written book reviews for The New York Times Book Review and other publications.
Tucker is the author of Scarface Nation: The Ultimate Gangster Movie and Kissing Bill O'Reilly, Roasting Miss Piggy: 100 Things to Love and Hate About Television.
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Baker supplies nearly all of the guitars, drums, synthesizers, banjo, and mandolin on her new album. It's a confessional and frequently beautiful record about mental distress and addiction.
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The country singer spent more than a decade in Nashville before her first record broke through in 2020. Now she's adding five new songs in an expanded version of that album called, Living The Dream.
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Jazmine Sullivan's "Pick Up Your Feelings"; Matthew Sweet's "At a Loss"; and Olivia Rodrigo's "Drivers License" prove that people experience heartbreak in as many ways as a heart can be broken.
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A new five-CD set features Stampfel's recording of a favorite song for each year of the last century. The resulting collection is a wonderful survey of popular music — as well as lots of great fun.
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Of the three Bee Gees, only Barry Gibb is still alive. His new album is Greenfields: The Gibb Brothers Songbook Volume 1. The HBO documentary, The Bee Gees,tells the story of the group's rise.
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The holidays have never felt more ambivalent — a feeling captured by Phoebe Bridgers' "Christmas Song"; The Bird and the Bee's "You and I at Christmas Time"; and Nick Lowe's "Winter Wonderland."
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The pandemic, along with unprecedented political and social upheaval, created a year in which listeners sought to be transported. Enter these 10 albums. At the top of the list: X's Alphabetland. -
Three new songs from established acts speak to the times: "Ghosts," by Bruce Springsteen; "Can't Put It in the Hands of Fate," by Stevie Wonder; and "Didn't Want to Be This Lonely," by The Pretenders.
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Once known as a loud bar band, Low Cut Connie bends classic rock to meet ever-more complex emotionalism. The resulting album is filled with songs about lovers, losers and beautiful dreamers.
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Prince's creativity is more impressive than ever on a new version of his highly praised 1987 album — now with three discs of previously unreleased material.
